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Sometimes everything comes together perfectly!. This is what happened on August 1st 2008 from my home location in Maghera, N. Ireland. Anyone who has even the slightest interest in Astronomy would have been anticipating the arrival of August, for three very exciting events were due to take place. First, the total/partial solar eclipse would be visible, during mid month the spectacular Perseid meteor shower would grace our skies for several days then at month's end a lunar eclipse would add to the celestial icing on the cake. However, getting excited about astronomical events months in advance (which I do) can be an unpleasant affair because the astronomer's biggest enemy is the weather. Ask anyone who has been an observer for many years and they will share stories with you about being clouded out during an eclipse, meteor shower, or great comet. Excitement can often lead to disappointment or even depression in this hobby when the clouds do not cooperate so it's best to stay quietly optimistic. I have been very lucky regarding clear skies and solar eclipses. In fact, I have only missed one eclipse due to cloud cover and observed all the others since my first partial (and best) back in 1999 which did cause the sky to darken noticeably with a sharp drop in temperature. I will not forget that eclipse and the experience I had on that exciting day. With this in mind I was eager for the August 1st event. For some this would be a spectacular total solar eclipse and for everyone else it would be a partial depending on your latitude on Earth. For those further north the eclipse would be substantial and further south this would be less so.
For my location in Maghera I would see nearly a 30% partial. Ingress would take place around 09.20 BST and end around 11.00 BST. Since the Sun would be high in the sky there would be no need to seek out a good location so I was happy with the thought of observing the event from the comfort of my own home. I didn't have much preparation to do. My plan was to break the session up into an even 50% of visual observing and 50% imaging. Far too often people get carried away with taking images to the extent that they actually see very little of the eclipse with their own eyes. I did not want to fall into that trap so I made a big effort to make visual observing a priority. I'm a visual observer at heart, seeing an event with your own eyes forges a strong memory of the day in your mind that will be precious and magical when you review it in the future. Images are great, however they are flat and emotionless. With visual work, even many years later, you will recall everything about the event, not just what you saw, but how you felt, your emotions, the sounds and smells - things which combine to form a personal and special experience which only the human brain can do.
For the visual work I was going to use my trusty Meade 90mm ETX M.Cass telescope with a Meade 40mm super wide angle Plossl eyepiece which would generate a large field of view (FOV) which would show the complete solar disk with room to spare. With the sky surrounding the solar disk like this I would see the Sun suspended in the sky like the star that she is. I think the famous Leslie Peltier said something similar with regards to the Moon. I wasn't sunspot observing so medium and high magnifications were not needed. On the objective (front) end of the telescope I had a homemade cover made from card and black insulating tape which housed a sheet of Baader astro solar filter. For imaging I would use my fujifilm S6500fd 6.3MP camera. I only had this camera since Christmas but since that period I have pressure tested it and literally took thousands of images so I wanted to test it out on the eclipse. The camera has a 300mm zoom lens. I planned to take off the solar filter from the scope and rest it over the camera lens for imaging. So that was it, nothing fancy, just a simple and straight forward plan which guaranteed no complications and would not get in the way of the eclipse experience. Just one other thing, and the most important thing of all...the weather!.
Eclipses and the weather make bad bed fellows in N. Ireland. During the build up to the event there were many who wouldn't believe we would see it. I never could understand that way of thinking because when you send an internal message like that to your brain you are mentally setting yourself up for failure weeks in advance. I personally had complete faith that I would see the eclipse because I could visualize it in my mind. When I can do this I know I will see it. With the eclipse on this Friday morning and with the current weather forecast on Sunday night I was beginning to think that I was being too optimistic. The forecast for the entire week showed clouds and heavy rain. Pretty much every day and night that week was terrible here with overcast skies and torrential rain with the occasional thunderstorm in parts. The satellite images showed cloud and rain for Friday morning. At that stage we were not going to see it. I was still looking for the positives, the cold front which would sweep over N. Ireland during the early hours on Thursday morning could break in the morning. In fact, a breaking cold front would produce not only clear spells but a very transparent sky in those gaps, plus the added bonus of having some patchy cloud which would make the scene more lively. You are often warned to never look at the Sun with the naked eye but with a certain density of cloud passing over the disk you could see it with comfort because the clouds act like a filter. I wanted to see the eclipse like that. On Thursday night's updated forecast the tables had turned. The cold front was expected to clear during the early hours and provide sunny spells during the morning. It looked like I was going to see the eclipse after all.
As an added bonus I seen that Tony Gilbert from the UKWeatherworld forum had issued a convective outlook for Friday. Not only was there a solar eclipse but there was also a risk of thunderstorms and possibly funnel clouds/tornadoes over N. Ireland. I got really excited about this, could I be lucky enough to catch an eclipse AND something cool which is convective in nature?. I began to get a good feeling!. Thursday night brought more torrential rain so I had a quiet night, I got two sets of four AA batteries charged and got my camera sorted out. I must have went to sleep at 04.30 BST.
My alarm woke me at 08.30 BST and I was out of bed in a flash. Pulling across the blind over my window I could see the clouds breaking and sunshine reflecting off the glass. I had a quick breakfast and a mug of brew (tea) to settle my excitement. On the television the BBC news were talking about the eclipse. I set up my ETX on the tripod in the back garden and set my camera on the boiler cover so it was close to hand. The Sun was bright and high in the east far above my neighbour's rooftop. The morning was mostly calm with a gentle and very welcome Summer breeze and the sky was full of cumulus cloud streets as well as some light altocumulus which would cover the Sun from time to time, and when it did, I could see the Sun's disk with the naked eye!. With just a few min's before first contact I got ready with the ETX. All I had to do was point it up in the direction of the Sun and make sure the shadow of my scope on the grass behind me was as thin as possible. This is how you know the Sun will be shinning through the objective lens. It's a safe way of doing it. Suddenly the clouds thickened and I lost the Sun with the naked eye. Now I felt blind as I swept the scope back and forth in altitude and azimuth in a panic to find the Sun. With a solar filter combined with clouds all I could see was a black FOV. I checked the time on my mobile phone and noticed with horror that first contact was already in progress!. Now I was feeling an explosion of emotions..tension, excitement, a quickening of the heart and the release of adrenaline combined with the lunatic panic of negative fears that I would not see a single moment of the eclipse. It is this moment of the unknown when your mind is focused with tunnel vision and your emotions freeze on a knife edge and you don't know what is going to happen next that your mind is as sharp as a razor. You become in some strange spiritual way connected to the event/experience and nothing seems to exist outside your tunnel vision. It's this peek moment which I love!. For me this is the human factor behind the visual observing experience. The clouds grew lighter, I could feel the Sun's heat on my forehead and with a long breath of relief and delight I looked into the eyepiece and saw the Sun's white disk. The top of the Sun had a black bite out of it!. It felt like 10 min's of panic but it was only a few min's which had passed since first contact so I relaxed and continued observing and let the day flow by itself.
I was fortunate enough to see the entire eclipse. The sharp black bite of the Moon appeared over the northern limb of the Sun and slowly 'chewed' it's way across the left hand side of the disk. It was a slow process but when your 'e watching it it seems to happen very rapidly indeed. I was able to look at the eclipse with the naked eye many times with complete comfort which was an absolute joy to see. I stuck to my plan and spent regular periods visually observing the eclipse through the scope complimented by photography. I only had one tripod though which was annoying because I had to keep swapping the gear over each time. This was tedious so I brought out a stool from the kitchen and set the ETX on that and kept the camera mounted on the tripod. Taking images was very difficult and demanded my complete concentration during the entire period. Getting focused with a 300mm fully zoomed in with strong sunlight getting in my eyes and making things difficult to see on the LCD screen took some patience. I took over 100 images and 7 long video clips. I had the aperture closed down a little, I only varied it from F/5 to F/6.5. I did have to continually adjust the shutter speed to adapt to the various thickness of cloud blowing across the disk and also the bite coverage itself. A large bite required a slower shutter and vice versa with the smaller bite.
The baader filter sat perfectly over my camera's lens hood and the lack of wind didn't threaten to knock it off, which if it did, would have burned the chip on my camera. The eclipse was nearly over so I visually watched the Moon vanish from the Sun with the ETX until the Sun was back to its normal complete disk. A superb feeling of satisfaction ran through me. The session was a success!, I got to see the entire eclipse, even get some images and video footage and get a tan at the same time!. I was extremely happy with the eclipse, in fact, it was perfect!.
Here are a few images I took. Most of them are taken near maximum eclipse. The clouds worked in favour here by providing an atmospheric mood to the scene. Had this of been a crisp clear blue sky I feel the images would have been boring, so for that, I was grateful.
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The following images are crops.
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This is my last shot before egress. I watched last contact visually. When I checked my camera immediately after I was shocked to see that it was set on ISO400 the entire time when it should have been ISO100. It was a basic mistake, it explained why I had to use such fast shutter speeds. However I think I have just got away with it and no more!. It's also nice to think that during an eclipse you are watching the New Moon during the day.
This is a youtube time lapse video I made. It consists of seven video clips merged together and speeded up by a factor of x2. The various AVI clips are edited because had I put the full length video on it would have lasted about 15-20 min's. 'Total Eclipse Of The Heart' seemed an obvious but fitting choice for a sound track. Note the very erratic unstable motions of the clouds, in particular after 2 min's into the clip. This was the first signs that Tony Gilbert's forecast was about to run its course for the rest of the day. Hope you like the video. Youtube compression is always very harsh so the high res original is so much better.
The eclipse was literally just over and it was only a few minutes past 11.00 BST. Now I was thinking about that convective forecast. Things looked good, there was very strong solar heating and many showers would be breaking out soon as they arrived from the west from the Atlantic Ocean. I was in central N. Ireland so it would be a while yet before they arrived here but when they did they could be thundery. The atmosphere was unstable within a highly sheared environment. I was thinking about heading out to the country for some convective photography but first I wanted to upload and sort out my images. It was then that I got a phone call from John McConnell from Maghaberry who lives further away to my SE on the other side of Lough Neagh. We began to discuss the eclipse and after a few min's I heard John say 'Oh My God'.....'Martin, I'm away!', then the phone went dead!. He said it with a voice that suggested shocked excitement with a serious tone. I was familiar with that sound, it doesn't happen very often but when a big noctilucent cloud display or aurora is present it would sound like that, only this time it was different. My instincts immediately told me John had seen a funnel cloud or tornado. Wondering what it could be I was running around looking out my windows to check all the compass points in the sky to see if it was here, whatever it was. I was running the possibilities through my mind. There was a sungrazing comet recently discovered which was expected to be visible in binoculars during totality. Could it have suddenly broke and experienced a tremendous outburst making it a naked eye daylight comet?. Possible, but I'm sure I would have seen it. I stuck with my first guess.
Soon the phone rang again, I recognized the number, it was John. He told me he had just seen a funnel cloud!. He explained that he had to hang up to get images as time was of the essence. The funnel formed close to his home in Maghaberry. John happened to walk out of the house while on the phone to bring in his tripod when he saw it. It was hanging from a row of cumulus congestus convective clouds and sported the classic funnel shape with a long narrow cone which was thicker at the top and tapered to a point at the bottom where a strange thin 'thread' could be seen hanging out from the snout of the condensation funnel. The funnel had a bigger collar where it met the cloud base. It was located in the southern sky and lasted between 15 and 20 min's in duration but it could have been visible slightly longer. John quickly snapped eight images with his Canon 400D on auto mode which captured the vortex phenomena perfectly. He told me the funnel was about 20 degrees above the ground. John kindly sent the images over to me as quickly as he could. He told me he would never forget this day as long as he lived. He had been checking the sky in a very dedicated fashion for a year or two hoping to catch a funnel cloud then on this day he got both a funnel AND an eclipse at the same time only min's apart!. Here are a few of his images...
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This is a crop
The images and account were quickly reported and soon after TORRO had issued a tornado discussion for N. Ireland, they even mentioned that funnel reports had been received from N. Ireland. That was John's report. Here's the TORRO forecast...
''A TORRO CONVECTIVE DISCUSSION has been issued at 11:50GMT on Friday 1st August 2008
Valid from/until: 11:50-18:00GMT on Friday 1st August 2008 for the following regions of the United Kingdom & Eire:
N Ireland
SW Scotland
THREATS
Isolated tornadoes, CG lightning, hail, torrential rain.
SYNOPSIS
Convergence INVOF surface low and strong diurnal heating are creating conditions favourable for weak tornadoes. Funnel cloud reports have already been received from N Ireland''.
John was on a high for the rest of the day (he still is) and is now looking for funnel number two. It was one hell of an exciting day, and it wasn't even midday yet!. John's funnel image appeared on the BBC website and in the Belfast Telegraph Newspaper. Here's a link to that article...
John found out later that one of his friends, Pastor David Goudy, had also seen the funnel while driving along Campbell's Turn on the main Moira road near Lisburn. Despite being further away he managed to obtain three images using his 3MP camera phone. I'm sure there are others who seen it to. If you are one of these people then please contact me and let me know what you saw. This turned out to be a very action packed day and although I never seen John's funnel myself I did share in the excitement of the experience with him so I was glad to be a part of that. There's something very special about funnels, if you have ever seen one in the flesh then you will know what I'm talking about. When I saw my first major funnel last year (report) it took me a month to come down from the high. After that I wanted to see another, it became an obsession and was responsible for my new interest in severe weather photography. John will no doubt be experiencing those same emotions. Congratulations to John on a great catch which was fully deserved!.
I spent much of the day after this in the country imaging the convection. It was eventful enough, then later that evening when I was home something major arrived over the northern section of Maghera and passed over my estate. It was the biggest and most menacing cell I have ever seen in my life. From a long period of observation I believe it had a large Mesocyclone (rotating updraught). This was a nasty looking beast with supercell-like characteristics. This will be the subject of my next image account. I will not forget this day either!.
Martin McKenna